Pride and prejudice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2018 (2284 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jim Blanchard is the author of Winnipeg’s Great War: a City Comes of Age. Four years ago, he wrote about the onset of the First World War and its impact on Winnipeg. He has continued to examine life in Winnipeg in the subsequent war years. This is the final instalment.

 

The year 1918 brought the bloody end of the war, with desperate fighting from March until November as first the Germans and then the Allies mounted massive attacks. There were Winnipeg units and Winnipeg men and women in France in all the four divisions of the Canadian Corps. Winnipeggers could take satisfaction in the successes of the Canadian army during the final “100 Days” from August to November 1918. The Canadians, along with the Australians, spearheaded the advance that pushed the German army back from the territory it had gained in the spring and helped to defeat their formidable enemy at last.

On March 27, on the eve of this last great push, Gen. Arthur Currie, the Canadian Corps commander, issued a grim special order to his troops. He wrote: “I place my trust in the Canadian Corps knowing that where the Canadians are engaged, there can be no giving way.… To those who fall I say you will not die but step into immortality. Your mothers will not lament your fate, but will be proud to have borne such sons… on many a hard fought field of battle you have overcome this enemy and with God’s help you will achieve victory once more.”

In August, after months of training for open warfare, so different from trench fighting, the Canadians began a war of movement. They captured tens of thousands of prisoners and vast amounts of equipment. On the last day of the fighting they brought the war full circle, entering Mons, France, where the Germans had won a victory over British troops in 1914. Casualties were high in the war’s last battles and the total Canadian losses for the entire war were close to 60,000 killed and missing. Up to January 1918, an estimated 3,785 Winnipeggers had died in the fighting and 9,727 were wounded. Precise figures were difficult to tally because Winnipeg people were spread throughout the Canadian Corps.

The troops who fought in the last months of the war included about 25,000 men who had been drafted under the Military Service Act of 1917. An additional 75,000 men were in training in England when the war ended. It has always been said the men who had been doing the fighting did not treat these conscripts as comrades. However, the recent study Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War, by Patrick Dennis, argues the men who went as draftees settled in and fought bravely, proving themselves to their fellow soldiers. Their losses were as heavy as any group of Canadian troops.

Winnipeg in 1918 continued to make substantial financial contributions to the war effort. The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire raised $4 million, while across the country 700 IODE chapters with more than 40,000 members continued providing warm socks for men in the trenches — an important part of the strategy that prevented trench foot — as well as operating hospitals and supporting the families of soldiers.

Magistrate Noble of the Police Court handed out heavy fines, saying he wanted to “…stamp out this beginning of anarchy in the country; we cannot allow the Bolsheviki to get a foothold here.” In Noble’s words we can see the beginning of the Red Scare that swept the U.S. and Canada in 1918 and 1919.

The Manitoba Red Cross raised a total of $965,344 during the war, while the women of the Winnipeg Red Cross continued producing a large volume of hospital supplies and garments, sending shipments to military hospitals in England and France. In the spring of 1918, the Winnipeg Red Cross used the first telephone solicitation to raise money for their work. From Saturday, April 6 to Monday April 8, 60 women working in three shifts each day called a total of 21,000 homes. They worked at a bank of 15 phones in the Red Cross offices in the Kennedy Building. The Government Telephones provided them with “professional” headsets. The idea originated with R. Young of the telephone system and David Finkelstein, a local lawyer and real estate developer. Only one person in 1,000 was uncivil to the callers. One volunteer, after she called all the Camerons and Campbells in the phone book, said she felt like she had talked to the whole “79th Cameron Highlanders.”

In 1918, the country was called upon once again to contribute to the war effort by purchasing victory bonds. The total raised across Canada was $695 million. In Manitoba, the objective set was $33 million, but Manitobans purchased $44 million. Only Ontario and Montreal raised more.

The year saw a good deal of anti-“foreign” feeling expressed in Winnipeg. Anger over the loss of life suffered in France and prejudices many harboured against immigrants from Germany and Austria Hungary led to some bizarre activities. Once conscription was in force on Jan. 1, 1918, the Dominion Police Force began arresting people who had not signed up when summoned to do so.

“Enemy aliens” from enemy countries had been denied the chance to volunteer for the Canadian army in early years of the war and now they were being arrested for trying to avoid conscription. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Russellites, who refused to put on the uniform and have anything to do with the conflict, were charged with being pro-German under the War Measures Act and their publications were banned. Threatened with heavy fines and jail time, they may have keenly felt the injustice of the situation since their fellow believers were receiving the same or worse treatment in Germany.

People were arrested for expressing pro-German opinions in public. A Netherlander, William Ged, was arrested in the Bowes Dairy Lunch for saying he hoped Germany would win the war. Magistrate Noble of the Police Court handed out heavy fines, saying he wanted to “…stamp out this beginning of anarchy in the country; we cannot allow the Bolsheviki to get a foothold here.” In Noble’s words we can see the beginning of the Red Scare that swept the U.S. and Canada in 1918 and 1919.

There was widespread anti-German and Austrian feelings in 1918. Rev. Wellington Bridgeman, a respected Methodist clergyman, expressed these feelings in his book Breaking Prairie Sod. He blames the “Hun” and “Austrians” — a term applied to Canadian Ukrainians with origins in the Austrian Empire — for society’s ills. Crimes, drunkenness, all sorts of moral failings are listed and Bridgeman’s solution is to send them back home and give their land and jobs to the returning troops. A sort of collective insanity seems to have set in, although certainly not everyone shared Bridgeman’s views.

At about 2 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 11, Winnipeggers were awakened when all the steam whistles the CPR could muster began to blow. The railroad had just been told by the Winnipeg Telegram newspaper that the war would be over at 11 a.m. that morning. Newsboys ran into the streets with extras confirming the news. By 4 a.m., the downtown streets were as crowded as they had been on that long ago day in August 1914 when the Great War began. Everybody just wanted to make noise and they did with car horns and pot lids and anything else they could lay their hands on.

“What an afternoon and evening we had! Crikey! It was good to be alive! We shouted and yelled and blew horns till our cheeks threatened to burst.… We went up and down Portage and Main yelling at our friends and acting generally as though we’d taken leave of our senses.”

In 1982, Winnipeg historian Bill Fraser published an article in Manitoba History based on an interview he did with Miss Taylor, who was in downtown Winnipeg that day. She had gone to work as usual at the Pitblado and Hoskin law office, thinking that they would close, but the firm had important work to do and so everyone had to stay until 1 p.m.

“At 10 minutes to one, we made a mad dash for the elevator,” she recalled. “What an afternoon and evening we had! Crikey! It was good to be alive! We shouted and yelled and blew horns till our cheeks threatened to burst.… We went up and down Portage and Main yelling at our friends and acting generally as though we’d taken leave of our senses.”

Much later in the evening, Miss Taylor remembered joining the crowd in front of the Manitoba Free Press building on Carlton Street to listen to the speeches of Lt.-Gov. James Albert Manning Aikins, Mayor Frederick Harvey Davidson and Premier Tobias Norris. Then, she remembered, the band began to play “…old favourites like Annie Laurie… on the outskirts of the crowd couples were waltzing. Sometimes people joined in the music, singing softly.”

The long night of waiting was over at last.

Jim Blanchard is a local historian. His book Winnipeg’s Great War, was published by University of Manitoba Press in 2010.